


Who He Is

by Morgana



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-28
Updated: 2011-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-17 08:09:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgana/pseuds/Morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newly souled vampires aren't always clear on their identity</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who He Is

Who was he? The question had been turning over and over in his mind for days now, churning around until it seemed he couldn't think of anything else. No, he didn't have amnesia, more's the pity - he'd always thought it sounded like a fascinating condition, whether real or in a soap opera. He was fully aware of what he was, what he'd been... the things he'd done.

Shuddering, he forced the ghosts of the past away. There would be time for that later. Right now he needed to figure this out. He was going back, not that there had ever been any real question in his mind about that, and he needed to know who he was before he got there. Because he wasn't who he'd been when he left, he knew that. But he still wasn't quite sure who he was, and he had to know - that was just one of the things a man should know, it seemed. He'd always known before, so it only made sense that he know now. He drew his legs up a little closer against his chest, leaned his head back against the cold steel wall of the tanker, and tried his best to sort it all out.

He knew who he wasn't - he wasn't William. He might have the poor bugger's soul, and he certainly had the pathetic handful of memories that had belonged to him, but he hadn't been him for over a hundred years. No, William had been born a proper Victorian gentleman and died a proper Victorian gentleman, and he didn't belong in the new world any more than if he'd somehow been yanked out of time to end up sprawled on the Watcher's pansy-ass rug. He was dead, and he was staying dead.

But he wasn't Spike, either. Spike had been a true child of darkness, born out of all the hatred and rage and pain that William had never wanted to face up to, and like any of his kind, he'd fed off of those things. Beauty had faded into the barest glimmer and he'd delighted in visiting all the harsh words and blows he'd received from his second family on just about everyone that crossed his path and rejoiced in the chance to be feared in the same way that his maker had been. And like his maker before him, he'd been brought low by that smallest, most intangible of things - a human soul, visited upon him because of a girl.

That was where the similarities stopped, though. Angelus had been snuffed out, imprisoned and chained by the soul that was forced upon him, shut away deep inside the suffering mind of the being that had become Angel. But Spike... Spike was still there, triumphant and bloody and sharing William's pain with every memory that he relived, every nightmare that shook him awake, every scream that echoed in his ears. This wasn't like Angel and Angelus, who might as well have been two separate beings for the way they acted and spoke about each other. No, it was more like he was something else entirely, something completely new and yet familiar at the same time, like whoever he was now was not Spike or William, but both. Or neither.

William's uncle had been a captain in the navy, a seafaring man that spent most of his time at sea, but there had been one time he'd come home for a visit, when William was young, before he started at school. He'd taken William down to see his ship, shown him the tall masts and vast sheets of canvas that billowed in the wind like the ship itself was eager to be off again. And he'd shown him the ropes, talked to him about how they frayed in the storms and salt water of the ocean until they had to be put back together, two old ropes spliced together to make something new, stronger than its two separate parts.

Maybe that's who he was now, a new creation that was made up of frayed, worn out ones. He could only hope that he'd prove to be stronger because if he didn't, if he failed again, if he hurt Her... And that was all that was needed to bring the guilt crashing down, but as the brief moment of lucidity slipped away and madness rose up to claim him again, he decided that it really didn't matter what he was called, so long as he remembered who - and what - he really was.


End file.
